High level politics is about dealmaking

To The Eagle:

High level politics is fundamentally about dealmaking. You can’t succeed unless you’re willing to make a deal with practically anyone on almost anything. Faust’s deal with the devil was fatal. On Capitol Hill, it’s how you survive.

Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy made a devilish deal with the GOP’s radical right wing fringe in order to secure the Speakership after his 15th dogged attempt to win the ballot. His razor thin Pyrrhic victory will fatally compromise his new position and the national legislation he intends to bludgeon with his gavel.

The new Speaker promised the GOP’s first bill will repeal funding for “87,000 new IRS agents,” an imaginary number never mentioned in the IRS funding legislation, yet persistently misrepresented by Republicans. He also intends to foster attacks upon the ‘woke agenda’ in education, and no wonder. Purging the principles of social justice from children’s education has become an urgent MAGA priority.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries declared his party’s priorities during his memorable concession speech after losing that speakership contest by the narrowest of margins. He pledged that “Democrats will always do the right thing by the American people; putting American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagoguery, freedom over fascism, hopefulness over hatred, reason over racism, substance over slander and voting rights over voter suppression.”

That woke catalogue of social justice in action is anathema to Republican reactionaries. Para-phrasing Florida’s governing demagogue- the GOP has become the place where woke goes to die.

I’ll always mourn the absence of Howard Brawn’s acerbic, witty responses to my ‘screeds.’

JB Bouchard, Puget Island